An IT industry insider's perspective on information, technology and customer challenges.

August 26, 2008

IT Is Inherently Green

I kind of reached a personal breaking point with all of this green IT discussion the other day.

I was on a panel, and this person went on and on about inefficient servers, inefficient data centers, people need to get with it, and so on. Finally, I had my turn.

Sure, I said, everything that consumes energy has its role to play, but let's look at how the intelligent use of IT technology makes an impact in reducing energy, carbon footprint, etc. -- outside the data center.

And maybe we should be promoting increased use of IT as an intelligent enhancer or replacement for other activities that perhaps aren't so beneficial to the environment.

A Couple Of Examples

I don't know if you've had the experience of using something like Cisco's TelePresence. I find myself explaining to people that it's not an improved conference call experience -- it's a direct replacement for an airplane trip.

EMC has started to invest in these rooms, as have more and more large companies with global operations. Even with initial deployments, I'd bet that hundreds of thousands of airplane rides have been avoided, and (hopefully) large amounts of associated carbon.

My point? IT should get "green credit" if they're implementing something that's a direct replacement for environmentally undesirable activities. Like riding airplanes.

In that same vein, consider telecommuting in all its forms. I don't know about you, but I can do a good day's work from home once in a while, and avoid driving my car to and from work. IT's investment in remote access, etc. -- well, I think IT should get serious "green" credit for the hundreds of millions of car trips that have been avoided already.

You Don't Have To Look Far To Find More Examples

In addition to direct replacements, many IT investments lessen the impact of necessary, but environmentally unfriendly activities.

Logistics companies like FedEx and UPS invest in all sorts of intelligent systems that optimize transport and delivery routes. Airlines use specialized applications to minimize fuel usage -- and track pilot's compliance with fuel usage guidelines. Many urban areas are investing in traffic control systems that minimize gridlock, keep traffic flowing and lessen the environmental impact.

And how much has e-commerce become a replacement for driving to the shopping mall?

Where Am I Going With All Of This?

I've seen plenty of discussion on how IT has to have a "green agenda" for a variety of reasons. And, yes, there's lots to do in more efficient use of servers, networks, storage et al. No argument from me on any of that.

But, if we're keeping a "green scorecard", doesn't it make sense to also account for IT activities that minimize the impact on the physical world?

Some rattled off a statistic to me the other day that IT energy consumption was some ridiculously small sliver of the overall global energy budget. Like low single-digit percentages small.

It made me think that maybe we're going after the wrong thing. Sure, we can (and should) spend time and effort to make IT more efficient. But -- just maybe -- we should be thinking about new IT investments that can impact things like automobile usage, power consumption, air transportation, logistics and the like.

And how many IT organizations are getting credit for their contributions in this category?

Comments

I've seen the same tiny figures...somewhere around 1.5% in the data center...let's say double that if you include desktops, laptops, handhelds and distributed systems. So 3%...big deal right? But as noted author David Moschella pointed out to me recently, what few are talking about is the fact that much more energy is used making IT equipment than using it. Technology manufacturing is energy intensive and Moore's Law and rapid lifecycles heighten that trend. This is a huge challenge for technology manufacturers that must be put on the table.

At the same time...to your point Chuck, using technology to attack energy consumption across the supply chain is an enormous opportunity.

So I say let's expand our thinking and go beyond the 1.5%/3% issue and address both efficiency at the point of technology creation and the innovative use of technology to measure, monitor and reduce environmental footprints. -Dave from Wikibon.org

I think you're on the right track and this has become a regular theme of discussions I have with customers.
First get your IT house in order and stop wasting energy. Then focus on how IT can help manage and save energy across your enterprise - and the economy as a whole.

IT energy use may be only 1.5% of the total but it's still huge in kWh terms and the EPA estimates it will double in the next five years. That would make it about 120 billion kilowatt-hours at a rough cost of of more than $10 billion. Enough to power nearly 12 million average U.S. households.

The more impressive number though is in research published earlier this year by the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy. The study, "Information and Communications Technologies: The Power of Productivity" argues that "for every kilowatt hour of electricity that has been demanded by ICT, the US economy increased its overall energy savings by a factor of about 10.

The implication is that IT already delivers a very significant net savings across the economy - enough to power 60 million households today and 120 million in five years.

Its going to take time, but there is enormous potential to increase energy efficiency through the use of a smart distribution grid. Its pretty clear that power distribution is an element of the infrastructure that needs significant improvements. Here's a link: http://www.oe.energy.gov/smartgrid.htm

Great points. Direct consumption of the ICT industry is reckoned to be 2-3% of global emissions by most observers. There are at least half a dozen reports that have been written on the potential of the industry to reduce global emissions. The latest (SMART 2020 produced by the Climate Group and GeSi) suggests that the ICT sector could reduce global emissions by 15% by 2020 – about a five fold benefit. SMART 2020 is one of the more conservative reports so far. As Dick Sullivan notes, the ACEEE paper identifies a much bigger benefit.

1. Assume there are 10% of all passengers are going to conferences and 20% would cancel the trip after installing TelePresence, then the total number of passengers will decrease by 2%. It looks like this 2% was given credits but the bigger 1.5 – 3% wasn’t.
2. Today’s IT products can reduce global emissions. Tomorrow’s greener IT products can reduce global emissions too. Reducing global emissions can’t make green IT less important. Similarly, the manufactory power consumption has little co-relation to greener IT either.

I don’t mean that the new emission-saving technologies, like TelePresence, are not important. They are important. Saving emission is like saving money. If you save some here and some there, then you can save a lot.

BTW, green IT doesn’t mean saving energy only. It should include space save, material saving and so on.

I had to sleep early yesterday because I had a job interview early this morning. I did not finish my comment. Following is the rest.

Since I got a degree on Earth Science and a degree on Environment Chemistry (before I got a degree on Computer Science), I was quite concern about the environmental things. IT is the only field I might be able to contribute something, although I wish I could do more (like help reducing manufactory power consumption). Green IT is also an area people haven’t paid enough attention. This is a digital age. If the volume of digital information is increasing in exponential rate and if people do not pay enough attention, then the IT Watts and IT waste (including the waste produced during manufacturing) will increase in exponential rate too. In the future all of us can see, the 1.5% will become double digits. So, please do not ignore 1.5%. It’s tiny, but it is growing.

After some self-study, I found the trick to promote green IT (or consolidation – another name I gave to green IT) is to make everyone happy. I was quite confident that I can convenience the end users if I tell them that green IT means less boxes, less wires, more robust, better performance, lower energy bill, less space, high automation (which not only means easier to use, but also means less human introduced error) and so on. However, I found it’s really hard to make the vendors happy. All they care is money, so the only way to convenience them is to show them the money. Since many vendors are still not very happy, I have to show them the money one more time:

1. “Less boxes and less wires” doesn’t mean less money. If one box or wire can do more things, you can raise the price. The end users can accept if they are paying the same money for the same performance. You can tell the end users that they can save more money from the lower operation costs.
2. “Next generation” is the driving force of replacing older equipments and you can tell the end users that green IT is the “next generation” (or another fancy word “IT V3.5”).
3. Green IT can also catalyst new technologies, new features and new products.
4. You can manage to boost the digital information volume, i.e. Web 2.0, HD TV over Internet, Business / Entertainment everywhere and so on.

If anybody has questions, we can discuss. We can also talk face to face (i.e. you invite me for an on-site interview).